


Badinerie

by Lavode



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 17:18:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavode/pseuds/Lavode
Summary: Ben and Shaw start sleeping together on Rose's suggestion. Awkwardness, jealousy, sex, music.





	Badinerie

**Author's Note:**

> Set at some vaguely defined point between the births of Baby John and Xander. Thanks to withinadream for beta, and sorry I've taken so long to post the result!

The interruption came when they'd worked up a good head of steam, at a moment when all January's thoughts were of the tangle of sweat-slick limbs, the shared breath and shared rhythm and Shaw's face close to his, the building tension as he stroked them both -

And then quiet. Shaw had stiffened against him as if electrified; a heartbeat later January felt him spill, warm and messy, on his own hand and cock.

Rose was in the doorway.

In the same moment January reached out his hand to her, she asked, "May I stay?"

"Please."

Her fingers were cool when she took his offered hand, curled them together as if to feel his warmth. She bent down, her face almost unreadable in the shadows, and kissed him so that his body arched against Shaw's weight. She glanced at the other man quickly, away, then back, longer. January squeezed her hand gently, but she pulled it away - almost shyly - and reached for his cock; the first pull drew his hips upwards again, pressing against Shaw's thigh. Rose looked at Shaw again, and January had the presence of mind to grip him by the leg: stay.

For a minute he seemed to float while she stroked him, looking into his face now, her braid hanging down to his shoulder. Before he came he drew her down for another breathless kiss.

\---

Somehow his foot found a weak spot his snake stick had missed, and after a blood-chilling weightless moment, down he went, and half the mud bank with him. There was a crash as if the state of Louisiana had torn itself free from its fellows and drifted off to rejoin France. He lay still and focussed on breathing, waiting for the world to settle around him. It was difficult to say how many bones he'd broken, if any, but there was no warm blood and he hadn't lost consciousness. Or landed in the water among the snapping turtles.

By the time Shaw found him he was sitting up and running his hands gingerly along his limbs.

"You all right?"

He grimaced. "Ask me in a moment, when I've tried to stand up." He reached for the other man's shoulder, but Shaw stopped him from rising with a hand on his own. He was breathing hard; he must have run far. His pale eyes were sharp.

"Slow. You finished checking for broken bones? Best sit for a bit..."

January smiled in spite of himself, suddenly embarrassed. "Let's get back to town before sunset. We'll be lucky if we - I - don't step on a snake anyway, without the added complication of darkness. My stick probably fell in the water."

Shaw grinned back suddenly, and relented after he had run his fingertips over January's head where it had struck the ground, and peered into his eyes to check his pupils. The walk home was uneventful, but the relief in Shaw's voice and the thought of how he'd come pelting through the water-moccasin land stayed in the back of January's head.

\---

Shaw had taken to stopping by the January house every so often after they returned from the mountains, for some coffee and some usually rather aimless conversation, and callas if Gabriel was cooking. They didn't speak of the trip except when Gabriel or Zizi-Marie asked, and then it was mostly accounts of river-crossing and bear-hunting and of January's almost-scalping. But the rest of it was on January's mind for a long time, and on Shaw's as well, he thought.

He was home now, with his Rose and their new son, and the rest of the city he'd grown up in: family, fellow musicians, his work at the hospital and many elements he hadn't missed so much. It would be a long time until he left again, if it depended on him. As for Shaw, January had the impression that something had been settled with their return, that his friend had reached some decision he didn't speak of. Some evenings they would sit in the slanting evening sunlight and sip their coffee, and the easy silence between them had a tingle to it that was new.

It was Rose who brought it up one night. Her long fingers paused on the peas she was shelling, and she frowned slightly, searching for words. Eventually she said, "You and Lieutenant Shaw don't seem to talk much about your journey."

"We don't," he said. "I suppose he's the one who'd have the most to say about it, as the instigator. And he doesn't seem to feel the need."

"I do like him," said Rose - something of a nonsequitur - "and I'm glad to have him over when we don't have any - guests. And you seem pleased to have him over." She looked across the table at him, eyebrows raised.

"But something about his visits concerns you," January guessed. He picked Baby John up from the kitchen floor and lifted him above his head as his own father had done with him, and the baby laughed as he had.

"At the risk of sounding like the stern paterfamilias in a play, do you know what his intentions are?"

"I don't think he comes over to look for escaped slaves in our cellar." He heard how weak that sounded; it was a risk he thought of every time the guardsman appeared on his doorstep. He'd seen Shaw bend the law many a time when he thought it right, but trusting that his idea of what was right would be the same as January's own was a gamble. But he did trust him pretty far, and in any case it would look much more suspicious to suddenly disinvite him.

"No. But that's not what I meant. I mean his intentions with regard to, well, you."

"He doesn't talk about that either," said January slowly, "but I get the feeling... Well, a feeling isn't much to go by. I don't think it's entirely friendship in his mind, but he's never broached the subject, in conversation or otherwise. Not during the journey, either."

Rose pushed her chair back and came around the table to hug him quietly, press her face into his hair, and he felt her warmth through the fabric of apron and dress and through her stays. Her scent soothed him. He felt as if the world had been turned slightly on its side, and didn't know whether he was more aghast at the suspicion - if that was what it was - or at the thought that she might have seen him with Shaw and felt lonely or hurt.

Shaw had never touched him in any way Hannibal might not have, or Crowdie Passebon or any of his musician friends. Hardly that. But there had been times when January felt that he might. And if he was honest with himself, there had been times when he wished it.

He held her by the arms and looked up into her face. "I married _you_ ," he said.

Rose looked pleased, but she drew her hands away, pushed her spectacles higher up on her nose and bent down for a moment to see what the baby was doing. Then she sat down opposite January again and resumed her work on the peas. 

"I think you want him too, though."

"Maybe," he said. It was like a confession; he almost wished she wasn't there to see his face as he said it.

"I love you." Only his wife could make a statement like that sound as if she was talking about the weather - or rather, Rose being Rose, the weather would bring out a lot of meteorological enthusiasm in her; a menacing sky held the potential for high wind speeds and rain and the study of electricity. That was the woman who had just said she loved him, and his heart swelled as it always did when she said such things. "I'm... very happy that you chose me, out of all the women in New Orleans and the Barataria. But Shaw seems to care for you as well, and you for him."

"Come here," January said. Rose stooped to pick the baby up again, and he drew her down on his lap, baby and all. Baby John giggled and started to pull at the hem of her apron. January kissed them both.

"I don't mean to say he has any claim on you - mine takes priority, anyway," she added with a smile he couldn't help but return. "But you... Since you seem to return his interest, maybe you should take it up with him."

"You don't sound certain of this, whatever it is you're proposing." Mind you, not nearly as uncertain as he himself felt.

Rose hesitated for a moment, then said, "It's something to consider."

\---

In fact January didn't end up doing much considering. There were a myriad reasons not to dally with anyone no matter what Rose said, least of all a Kaintuck guardsman who didn't bathe. But if Shaw wanted something beyond friendship - consciously or not - January couldn't keep telling himself that there wasn't a part of him that saw this, and wanted the same. The one time he'd felt drawn to another man and acted on it had been years ago, when he was freshly arrived in Paris and determined to leave the past behind in as many ways as possible. Most of the time he shrugged off the memory as a folly of his youth, but the past didn't always feel like another country.

Well, what if he was wrong and Shaw wanted nothing of the sort? Or just didn't want to act on it? It would be like him to treat unwanted desires rationally (January's confessor would probably call it remaining strong in the face of temptation). Maybe especially if that temptation wasn't just carnal.

He walked around the market and up and down Rue des Ursulines, fingering his rosary. The winds down by the river did little to clear his head. Each time the memory of that moment by the bayou came back to him, the memory of how Shaw had touched his face and peered into his eyes, something resounded in him, clear as a bell.

_Guess I really did hit my head._

Four days after his conversation with Rose he ran into Shaw in the Place d'Armes and spent five minutes in indifferent conversation while Shaw distributed cake crumbs to the gulls and January reminded himself once a minute that he had nothing to hide from his friend. He did feel almost as if Shaw had caught him climbing out of someone's bedroom window with a sack on his back, but if the policeman noticed he showed no sign of it. Rose only smiled when January mentioned it to her; he was beginning to think she really didn't mind the idea of him bedding someone other than her. Oddly enough, it made him feel jealous. The situation wasn't just silly, it was turning into the worst kind of operetta, and he seemed to have been cast both as the stern husband and the cheating spouse. It wasn't funny, either.

Rose pulled him into bed almost as soon as they'd finished dinner. He relished their lovemaking: her hair, the smells of her sweat and her desire for him, the light in her eyes. Most of all her strength when she clutched him to her, as if claiming him. She had chosen him too, after all.

She slept immediately afterwards; he took longer to drift off.

\---

The next time Shaw came over January looked him up and down: long, ugly, threadbare, dubiously clean. Nothing about the other man suggested any emotion besides a slightly tired placidity, but he was _there_ , sitting on their sofa for the fourth time in five weeks. More than he'd used to visit.

Looking down at his hands and the almost-full coffee cup beside them, January willed himself to calm. He had the sense of keeping a secret without knowing for sure if it was delicious or terrible or both, and prolonging the minutes before he shared it. He wanted to speak immediately, and to turn and flee downstairs to the secret room underneath the house and not come out until Easter. His skin was too cold or too hot by turns.

Donne, vedete s'io l'ho nel cor, _or if this is just the early stages of the yellow fever..._

"I wanted to speak to you about our friendship," he began. "Actually, it's the second time I've tried to bring up the subject. You remember the last time we went chasing around in the swamp?"

At the word friendship Shaw had raised his eyebrows; now he looked tense, uncertain. After a few moments January asked quietly, "Am I wrong in thinking that you have something more than a friendly feeling for me?"

"No."

"I'm sorry to be so blunt about it. I wouldn't ask - that it, it was Madame Janvier who... suggested I bring it up with you." Shaw sat bolt upright at that, almost spilling his coffee. January smiled wryly.   
"Yes, that was how I felt, and still do."

"M'am Janvier said... what'd she say? Go" - he visibly swallowed a word or two and cast about for a more proper alternative - "go pass the time with somebody else? With a man?"

"She said that if someone else is important to me, that doesn't diminish her importance, and I should speak to you and hear what you said. Also that she'd take it as an insult if I thought she was being a martyr." His mouth was drier than ever, but at least he wasn't alone now.

"Huh," said Shaw, something between a grunt and a laugh. Then he laughed in earnest. "A fellow thinks himself safe putting on a poker face and keeping his hat down, an' then he runs into a woman - leastwise if it's M'am Janvier or any of the women in your family!"

January smiled back, relieved; Shaw stopped laughing abruptly and looked down at his cup, wiped off a trickle of coffee that was making its way toward the table.

"Please forget that I ever brought it up if it bothers you. But... I don't know if it's wise, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't like to try." _Try what?_

Shaw considered him for some moments, then agreed, "It may not be wise." Bravely, he held out his hand.

\---

They went into the scullery rather than the bedroom, and what followed was heady and new.

"You done this before?" Shaw asked afterwards, when they sat leaning against the brick wall in the cramped room; the day had been warm enough that the coolness in the shadows was a relief. He brushed his wet hair out of his face, and his arm glistened with water. January's mouth tasted of tobacco.

"In a scullery, you mean? Or with another man, or specifically a member of the City Guards?"

"Best let me know if you plan to make a habit of draggin' my men in here for purposes of breakin' the law. But yes, with another man, I mean."

"Not since my student days. I had a friend among the other students at the Hôtel-Dieu, a Spaniard who - well," he amended, "you keep a number of young men in one attic, surrounded by a festive atmosphere and stacks of anatomical textbooks for inspiration, and this happens every now and then. It didn't last long in any case." He hadn't heard from Gallardo since they and their fellow students returned from that trip into the Swiss mountains. Did he have his own practice by now? Did he still insist on that beard? 

"What about you?"

Shaw shook his head, dripping on January's equally-wet shoulder. "I guess I thought about it from time to time, but it stopped at thinkin'."

January remembered what Shaw hadn't quite told him during the Oregon journey, about the wife he'd lost before coming to New Orleans, and Ayasha came into his mind the way she seldom did these days, like a trace of grey cloud on a bright sky. In a way he missed her more after he met Rose. At first he'd felt as if he was betraying her - leaving her to die alone, then living on with another woman. That had passed, but there were still times when he felt sad or envious on her behalf, that she couldn't share the joy of his and Rose's life together. Rose knew this; she had her own ghosts to lay to rest. Not all wounds healed, even if they didn't kill. But most days his thoughts of Ayasha brought love and gratitude that he'd been allowed to know her.

For a time after he first met Shaw there had been a kind of tension between them, a slight tingle of potential that he'd forgotten about when Rose stepped into his life, seeking a physician for her students.

How long had Shaw wanted this? What did he say to the memory of his own woman?

He didn't ask, then or later, but Shaw leaned his shoulder against January's chest and kissed him with an easy warmth that kindled him anew, and he pushed that line of thought aside.

___

Rose was making fireworks in her laboratory; at the moment it wasn't doing double duty as a school room, which meant she could indulge herself more. She had timed the fuse three times and now took pleasure in weighing ingredients up from their containers,counting grains and testing for purity. The sun was setting; Zizi-Marie was busy in the kitchen, preparing dinner while watching the baby, but would need to be relieved in about ten minutes, when it was time for him to eat. Benjamin was at the piano; music threaded its way up through the house, snatches of country dances irreverently mingled with Beethoven and improved upon according to his imagination. She hadn't heard him improvise like that since before his long journey.

She finished for the night and washed the vessels. The pot of copper salts stayed where it was, so she'd remember to refill it. The problem - which either shouldn't be a problem at all or was something she ought to rend heaven and earth over, or at least add enough gunpowder to her fireworks to blow up the French Quarter - kept itching at her.

In the last two weeks or so she wanted Ben what seemed like all the time, whether he was with her or not. It might just be her body returning to its usual state after pregnancy; she'd have to look through his medical journals and see if any of the learned gentlemen mentioned anything of that nature. Or at least speak to Olympe. But she more than half suspected it was something else.  
The previous night, and the last two times they made love before that, she'd pressed her face hard against his shoulder to draw in his scent - which she'd loved well before he ever shared her bed - and smelled Shaw on him, tasted him on Ben's skin. Some mythical Greek creature within her had awoken, furious with desire to feel him against her and in her. It didn't seem like jealousy.

Sometimes it was, though. Ugly and irrational. Ben was writing music for the first time in some months (the baby, she told herself; he might be a source of artistic inspiration, and not fussy most days - but he did sometimes keep them awake, and neither of them wanted to risk waking him up more often than necessary.) It didn't mean he'd found something in Shaw or felt something for him that she couldn't give him, something he needed. And even if it did, she wanted him to have it. It didn't make her any less Ben's wife.

She did love to see him happy, and he shared the joy - almost radiating it at times, but mostly it was something she felt, in his smile and the warmth of his skin through the linen shirt when she hugged him, or heard in the play of his fingers on the guitar when they sat on the veranda after dinner.  
While she didn't share his belief in God, exactly, there were times when the rite of joining they had gone through seemed like a real thing, as if the phrase about "one flesh" had a literal meaning.

She liked Shaw, as a fellow-being (as he might say) and as one of the few city officials with principles _and_ the wits to put them into practice, and in some sense as a friend. Now she was learning about him by deputy, as it were; his tobacco-smell on Ben, and the way his long mouth changed the shape of his face when he smiled at him. The contrasting way he'd been looking at her lately, more formal than before and with a blankness that looked slightly skittish. (Was _he_ jealous?)

The itch was still there when she went back downstairs. She reminded herself again that they had chosen each other, she and her husband. The rest would fall into place somehow.

\---

"It made me happy when you asked me to stay."

Rose's voice was quiet, but it held a smile at the memory. She looked up briefly, met January's eyes above the rim of her spectacles. He waited for her to meet his eyes again, but she looked down at the book she held, long lashes dipping.

"I don't know what to say," he began after a minute. "Sometimes I worry - I feel sure that I've wronged you. Hurt you, in our own house. But you haven't -"

"Behaved like a woman betrayed by her husband? I'm not sure how they behave outside of plays and novels."

"I think we've seen a few."

She didn't answer immediately, and he tried to relax into the silence between them as he usually did - with her and with Shaw. He was fairly sure he knew Rose well enough to tell when she was angry even underneath her usual practicality, and it didn't look like this.

"I've been afraid that you'd found someone more important than me," she said, finally. "It's not easy to articulate, but... I don't think anyone matters more to the lieutenant than you do, and sometimes you look at him in a way that - that makes me worry. Makes me jealous, I suppose. As if I might only be the moon, after all, or some lesser heavenly body, and not the sun."

"You aren't." It came out almost harshly; his throat was suddenly thick. "Of course not - of course my world revolves around you." Rose smiled thoughtfully at the image. Then her smile widened and became almost tearful when she looked up at him again. Each of them reached for the other at the same moment, as they had that time when he asked her to stay. She hugged him around the small of the back, pressed her face into his chest, and stayed like that for a long while, until the book toppled down from her lap and he had to let go in order to retrieve it for her.

She said, "I know I'm - well, your wife, with all that implies, I hope." January kissed her hair in as Sir Launcelot-like a fashion as he could. "You showed me that, that time, and most of the time it sticks. But sometimes I think I might like a reminder." He set a hand on the back of her chair and stooped further to kiss her on the lips, less chastely, and she responded eagerly. There wasn't time to retire to the bedroom - he'd promised Dr Ker to return to the hospital later that evening - but some pleasures could be delayed and be all the greater for it.

On his way back to Charity he thought of Shaw, of the soft places on his long bony body and the lightness of his touch, and the way he smiled sometimes - and he did smile more than he'd used to, January realised. That might apply to himself as well. It wasn't like being with Rose, either in bed or strolling around town together, but something in him warmed and softened at a certain look from his friend, a certain tone of voice. That was what Rose had seen and felt jealous of; it didn't matter that Shaw seemed content with the occasional afternoon or cup of coffee in the market.

He remembered looking up at her that time when she'd walked in on them, trying to make out her face in the blue gloom. Then her hair on his chest when she kissed him, so hotly that his hips moved on their own. Claiming him, looking into his face as she stroked him and brought him over the edge, while he clung to her, helpless and ecstatic. He loved the memory of her eyes.

Rose had looked at Shaw and he at her, both slightly wary. He had obviously reacted to her presence - January remembered the warm spill of his seed in his hand, and the memory brought another small stab of excitement - but neither of them had spoken. Had Rose enjoyed Shaw's presence, too? Wanted to touch him as well, or for him to lean forward a few inches where he half-sat on top of her husband and kiss her as she had just kissed January?

The thought went through him like a surge of heat, from his middle down to the groin and into the ground like a lightning bolt. The chorus of the psalm he was working on came into his head; he didn't know how it would end yet.

\---

"No, please sit." Rose Janvier smiled as she came into the kitchen, so Shaw sat back down the few inches he'd had time to rise. "I'd like a word with you, if you have time. We probably should have talked earlier," she added, rather soberly.

"Have I... offended you?" She had plenty of cause to think so. She was an unusual woman in some ways, and not the sort to say the opposite of what she meant, but he couldn't blame her for wanting her husband to herself. The last time they'd been face to face like this he'd been naked on top of Ben - _there's a sight to send a woman running_. But she hadn't.

She sat down opposite him, pushing a loose strand of hair under her white tignon. (She hadn't been wearing it then; her hair had been loose, curling softly over her shoulders.) Poured herself some coffee, offered to top his up, then set the pot down again with a small sigh. He waited.

"I've spoken to Benjamin." A long pause. "Did you know he's working on a psalm? Or it may be two or three - they're still at the sketch stage, different each time he sits down at the piano."

"He didn't say."

"I don't know how long it's been since he wrote something new like this. More than a year. I think it's likely to be your influence - your company. And I'm glad he's happy." She sipped her coffee - black, no sugar, as she usually took it - and he did the same. It occurred to him that she wasn't as uncomfortable as most people would be in the same situation; waiting for her to speak was a little like waiting for the judge to pass sentence, and she had to see him sweating. But she took her time, and the slight smile that came and went, sunbeam-quick, looked sincere.

"You look different, too," she said.

"Ben said as how you'd seen right through me."

"Sorry. What I'm trying to get at is that I - you haven't offended, and I hope you won't decide to tactfully stop visiting. For both our sakes, his and mine."

He looked right at her for the first time, and she added, "And - some time - maybe I can be with you again." She met his eyes, not without effort; her green ones pierced him through as they had that one time. This was what she'd really wanted to get out. She'd been the one who suggested all this to Ben in the first place... which didn't mean she couldn't have changed her mind. Or else that might have been her idea all along.

Here he sat in Ben's kitchen, her kitchen, drinking her coffee and discussing how he'd been fucking her husband, and she thought he might be offended. And now this.

He shook his head. "These whole five minutes I been wishing the _Picayune_ would waste less ink on how many petticoats to wear to your aunt's uncle's funeral and more on these kind of manners, so I'd know how to say _You honour me greatly, madame_ , without it sounding false. Or rude." Or like _no_.

"Maybe if you spent more time at the opera." She looked relieved. The freckles across her nose shifted into a different shape as her lips curved. The internal sun-glow or stove-heat of fondness and baser feelings for Ben that seemed permanently lodged between his heart and his stomach had taken on an edge, ever since that time. A new awareness of her. It wouldn't be prudent to let it show, until he knew for certain she didn't mind. And that Ben didn't, though the your-neighbour's-wife commandment did seem to presuppose you weren't already bedding your neighbour.

"You spoke to Ben about this? What'd he say?"

"He said it was all right. I am a bit jealous, and I suspect he is, too. But I - did like to be there that time." She glanced at him again, out of the corner of her eye.

They went on to talk about Baby John and about her plan to reopen the school, but there was a sense that a treaty had been signed.

\---

January came home late from the hospital. It had been a relatively uneventful day; he'd diagnosed a woman with food poisoning, then splinted a small boy's broken leg and told his older brother it would heal easily, youth being what it was, if he was careful not to put any weight on it. The younger boy had looked very put out at this news, but his brother looked as if a weight had been taken off his shoulders, and a few years for good measure - which was a feat, since he was something like fourteen. No one had died, for once, and there seemed to be a lull in the usual epidemics.

He half expected the sky to take on the odd light that meant a storm was near, but it was the same deep blue as it had been every night for the last three weeks. Mozart was in his head, all the silliest parts of _The Magic Flute._

_Klinget, Glöckchen, klinget,  
Bringt mein Weibchen her!_

_Or at least remind her to look at her barometer just in case..._

But Rose was out when he came home, and Baby John as well - visiting a friend, Gabriel said. Further questioning revealed that she'd gone to help Dominique with something and that Chloë Viellard was there as well. Gabriel himself was due back at the hotel at eight, but until then   
sat in January's kitchen, drinking lemonade with mint.

"So what do they have to teach you that you don't know already? The sauce you made the other day was at least as good as anything I remember eating in Paris."

The young man gestured with an adolescent mix of modesty and impatience. "They're paying me for my work, better than most places would. And M'sieu Martin says he might promote me before Christmas. And anyway, I had a whole pot of sauce curdle last night and had to start over."

"To your health and your coming promotion, then." January raised his own glass of lemonade. "Is Zizi upstairs?"

"No, she's at home. I think she wanted to see What's-his-name again." His name was Ti-Gall and Gabriel knew it, but apparently felt it his duty as a brother to show a certain (none-too-serious) disdain for Zizi-Marie's fiancé.

"Evening," Shaw said, removing his hat as he came in; Hannibal followed, already hatless. "Gabe. Ain't you supposed to be over to the hotel?"

Gabriel smiled and tilted his head. "I'm due back in an hour, sir. Arrest any murderers today?"

"'Bout a dozen."

"We live in lawless times," said Hannibal. His tone was light, but his eyes were serious when he glanced at January across the table. "Is Rose out?"

January explained about her sudden visit to Dominique - she hadn't said when she'd be back, as it turned out, but would probably need an escort home later on. While the evening cooled Hannibal told a story involving a Venetian tavern and a cook who had mixed up two bottles while making a wine sauce and ended up setting a tablecloth on fire, and Gabriel, remembering his curdled sauce, declared his intention to become a violinist. He did return to the hotel somewhat later, glowing faintly with pride to feel included among the men, and Hannibal followed him. He was looking stronger these days, but apart from the story he'd been unusually quiet.

Twelve heartbeats after the door closed behind him January and Shaw went into the scullery again, silently and with barely a glance at each other, both mostly hard before their clothes were even half off. January's skin pebbled when he drew his shirt over his head, and he shivered when Shaw's hands slid up his thighs, outside his half-open trousers and then inside them, one rough palm stroking him bone-hard as easily as a sculptor molds clay. He took a step forward to keep his balance - his whole body seemed to move with Shaw's hand - and leaned into Shaw. Kissed him lightly, both of them distracted.

This was the man Rose wanted in their marriage bed.

Where he had brought him in the first place.

Behind his closed eyelids he saw Shaw that afternoon on the levee, grinning with tobacco-stained teeth at an anecdote January had heard at the latest Free Coloured Militia and Burial Society meeting; the same tobacco that could still be smelled and tasted on him, if more faintly now, since he seemed to have taken up some form of semi-regular bathing. His friend who had saved him and been saved by him in turn, leaning against him in a scullery corner, kissing the corner of his jaw wetly, licking behind his ear; his skin felt almost cool against January's chest, but his mouth was hot.

"You've shaved," January said in his ear, and he felt Shaw smile.

"This morning, only it don't last long. Usually I don't bother."

Experimentally January kissed him the same way, under his jaw and up behind the ear, and Shaw caught his breath and gripped his shoulder harder, steadying himself as January had. However he felt about sharing the bed he and Rose slept in with Shaw, January had to admit that it would be a far more comfortable place for a tryst.

Would Rose want to be with Shaw like this - kiss him, grasp his naked hips as January did, smile the secret, thoughtful smile she wore when they'd made love and she settled against him, sweaty and rumpled and putting her spectacles back on?

He kissed Shaw again, with more determination this time - if not quite anger - and Shaw held him eagerly, pressing their cocks together between their bodies. 

"You want to fuck me?"

"I want to see," January said. "Wait a moment..."

He untangled himself and located the candlestick by the sink, then - after some increasingly ridiculous fumbling around the lowest shelves - the matches.

Shaw was tugging at his cock to stay hard, but his eyes fell on January's activities when the faint light spread, and he grinned. "How's that line go about the east and Juliet bein' the sun?"

"How about comparing the situation to something that's not a tragedy?" January retorted, getting up from where he'd been kneeling with as much dignity as he could muster. Whatever it was he felt for this American who leaned tall and skinny and impudent against the wall of his scullery, it did feel like something out of a farce.

Shaw pulled him close again, as if this was the easiest and most obvious thing in the world. They washed, themselves and each other, in the candlelight, and January had him against the wall while Shaw sweated and cursed, the muscles in his back tensing against January's still-damp chest as he braced himself against the cool bricks. And for that long, at least, it was easy.

They settled on the floor afterwards as usual, untangling without hurry. Rose liked to talk after sex; one of the joys early in their marriage - and since - was hearing her comments on the experience with what he thought of as her scientist's voice, slightly detached and amused, a world removed from her joy in his body and in sharing hers with him. Shaw was almost the opposite, he had learned, and could voice the most brainless vulgarities in the heat of the moment but was mostly silent after. It might be embarrassment, or it might be that he simply found the quiet as restful as January himself did. But he ran his fingers lightly along January's arm and shoulder, traced the shapes of his ear and his lips, and there was something in his eyes of the same wonder Rose's hazel-green eyes would have held under similar circumstances. 

They were clean and dressed and had restored the little room to something resembling order when Rose returned. She kissed her husband cheerfully - not entirely proper in front of a guest - and held out her hand for Shaw to sketch a bow over, then disappeared upstairs with the sleeping baby before January could say anything about the late hour and the possible dangers of being out after curfew (all of which she was aware of, of course). He would have to speak with her again.

Shaw departed, giving January's fingers a quick squeeze in farewell, and January took the candle and went upstairs.

\---

Rose had finished brushing out her hair for the night and was in the middle of braiding it. John was fast asleep in his crib - being around his adventurous older cousin must have been tiring. January hoped Charmian had not tried to get him to share her fascination with spiders and cockroaches.

Rose reached for him, and he bent to kiss her. The peace of being alone with her at the end of the day like this was one of the best things in his life.

"Madame Chloë got her coachman to take us most of the way home," she said, in a half-whisper so as not to wake their son. "I couldn't very well turn her down, not without bothering someone else instead."

"Mmm." He yawned and stood with his hands on her shoulders so she could lean her head against him, which she did. "How chaotic was your visit? Baby John is a quiet child most of the time, but Charmian..."

"She's perfectly well behaved - most of the time, when someone's watching. It's a good thing I have experience with girls of varying ages - otherwise she'd have me wrapped around her little finger by now. Like Minou does. Chloë didn't see why we shouldn't devote a few minutes to the study of the common roach at her request - yes, I thought you'd shudder like I did - as long as we kept it off the cake tray, but Minou talked her round and then changed the subject."

"My sister is an unsung heroine."

"And a better hostess than I'll ever be. How was your visit with Shaw? I don't mean that to sound crude or accusatory, I just..." She trailed off, shrugging slightly against his hands.

"You didn't go out just so we could be alone, did you? Rose..."

"No, I just got a polite note inviting me to tea and ended up staying rather late. Chloë asked me about the conductivity of certain alloys, and I said I'd lend her a book or two - well, you can hear the details another time if you care to. I think we all had a good time, except the roach."

"I'd offer to search your hair and clothing for unwanted insects, but I don't feel up to the task tonight." He did bend his head to sniff her hair, but it only smelled of her own warm scent. 

"I hope the offer is still good tomorrow morning." She turned her head to smell him, or at least his shirt. He imagined her smelling faintly of tobacco (the way he probably did himself), pictured Shaw's callused hands on her half-bare shoulders where his own lay. The strange tangle of tender anger and want stirred in him again.

"So do I," he said. She stroked his fingers lightly with her own, and he looked down at her, considering. _If you love me as I love you, then what? Can we share, if we are both jealous..._

_It may not be wise_ , Shaw had said, and it wasn't. Yet January was unwilling to give it up.

\---

For much of her life Rose had found men dull or aggressive or both at once, and that might have included Xenophon and John Dalton as well if she'd ever met them face to face. She'd seldom been tempted to spend much time around them, particularly since that was how so many women found themselves bound to a wholly domestic life with no hope of anything else. Benjamin was the first man she'd really felt drawn to, not just in an intellectual way, and for years she was afraid that she might weaken, give in to the hunger he awakened in her, and fall into the same trap she'd seen so many of her schoolmates and students stuck in.  
She'd been very lucky: he didn't see her as a mere helpmeet or want her to be one. He listened and asked sensible questions when she told him about the latest paper she'd read (and sometimes told her about something similar he'd read in _The Lancet_ ), and if he sometimes wanted to leap about and yell at her when she talked about her experiments he did his best not to show it.

She loved to be in bed with him, too: his weight, the delicacy of his touch, the slowly-increasing amount of white in the dark hair on his chest. The small involuntary sounds he made when she kissed him and let her hands slide along his back, loving his shape - sounds he no longer tried to suppress now that he knew how much she enjoyed them. She thought idly about Shaw's scent and the way he'd looked during their talk in the kitchen.

Benjamin crawled into bed beside her, which as usual made the mattress tilt slightly so that she rolled closer to him. She moved away - the night was chilly but too much heat was worse than too little - and looked at him for a minute before removing her spectacles.

"Will you see Shaw tomorrow?" 

"He doesn't always turn up when and where I expect him, but I'll ask him to come, if you like." He smiled, slightly bashfully, but there was a question in his voice. The corners of his eyes turned down the same way Baby John's did when he smiled. There were times when he made her feel as if she was transparent, every fleeting thought or feeling visible as the organs of a fingerling fish; it wasn't always an uncomfortable feeling. But in this he seemed to trust her as she trusted him. She let herself be giddy, leaned on one elbow to kiss him in response, and his smile turned to a less bashful grin. Judging from what she'd overheard while making dinner that evening, his psalm was almost finished.

When the lieutenant showed up the following evening none of them spoke much. Benjamin closed the door behind his friend, carefully and with a sense of ceremony, and stepped in to kiss him on the lips, which Shaw received with a slight chuckle of surprise. He removed his hat with one hand, and when they parted Rose waited until he turned to look at her. Ben's face was still soft with the kiss, and remained soft as he looked at them, but Shaw's eyes sharpened as if he hadn't expected to see her there.

Rose held his gaze - maybe he could hear her heart pound, maybe both men could, but it was all right - and laid her hand on his coat sleeve as Ben had a moment earlier. The wariness in his pale eyes turned almost to fear, but he bent his head and kissed her too. Slowly, formally, but she let her hand slide along his arm, and the tension between them changed and shifted; she met his eyes again, and his shoulders relaxed a little. He laid his fingers over her smaller ones and stroked them.

\---

Rose not fancying the scullery - they none of them really did - they repaired to the bedroom.

"Help me with my stays," she said. Under her suit of whale-armour she had only her shift on, and her hair tumbled soft and dark about her shoulders when she undid the white tignon. She looked like something out of a story of knights and fairy queens, except for the spectacles. Ben glanced at Shaw over her shoulder to see his reaction. His eyes were warm and dark, but he didn't say anything. Shaw knew better than to turn and run from a good thing because he wanted it too much, or because he couldn't have it for long, though it was a near thing. Instead he knelt in the thin sliver of moonlight on the floor and brought Rose's hand to his lips, then impulsively did the same with Ben's. Their eyes struck him to the heart, darkness or no darkness; they both smiled and held his hands. Drew him to his feet.  
Ben had a way sometimes of suggesting without words. Maybe that was why Shaw leaned his face to his. He stepped back to look into his face, then leaned in close again. Ben slipped his braces down, slid one hand down his spine outside the shirt and dragged at his shirt; his breath was ragged and warm against Shaw's throat, while the air was chilly on the bare skin. They kissed again, almost without thinking, and the time they'd spent in the scullery came rushing back in a second: warm hands, the shape of Ben's hip and belly and cock under his fingers, the smells and the sound of his voice; things he'd known since they first met and things learned in these last few months, fresh as if they'd just happened.

Not too fast. They'd made it a ritual; best savour it.

"How about I suck you off?" he whispered. "Been a while since the last time."

Ben gave a satisfying twitch at this vulgarity - mostly out of surprise - but he went harder still, and Shaw thought he almost felt the warmth and dampness of his cock through the fine wool of his trousers. He glanced at Rose, who hadn't swooned yet.

They started out with Ben standing, holding on to one of the bed posts, but Shaw pushed the trousers down around his knees and knelt again and went slowly. Even so, Ben sank onto the bed in what couldn't have been much more than a minute; he wasn't generally a swearing man except in anger, but his lips were half-open now as if cursing under his breath, and he still gripped the bedpost. At first he'd looked down at Shaw as if refusing to turn down a challenge, but then, with some effort, he turned to look at his wife instead and share it with her as well. She sat down beside him on the bed and touched him, carefully at first, almost shyly. Her long fingers drew figures on his belly, wet where Shaw had kissed him, and threaded gently through Shaw's hair while he sucked on him. The linen of her shift brushed his cheek.

"Wait!" Ben fairly gasped, somewhat later. "Will you accept an honourable surrender?"

"Depends on the terms," Rose said. Shaw let his friend's cock slip from his mouth, for the time being.

"I'd rather not finish alone. Doesn't seem fair. Give me a minute."

He drew a deep breath, then another. Rose smiled like a bad gambler who thinks he's caught his opponent out and looked over at Shaw, somewhat out of breath himself at the moment, considering him. Then leaned suddenly across Ben's leg and kissed him full on the mouth, with a heat that shouldn't have surprised him. He kissed her back, light then deep; his mouth still tasted only of Ben's cock, and the thought of her feeling it, wanting more of it, made him sigh as Ben had a moment earlier. She had to be wet now, slick and warm and sweet, and he wanted nothing more than to put his face between her legs and taste her too, but she wasn't offering. She rubbed Ben's thigh, drew her fingertips along Shaw's collar bone inside his shirt, and up, tracing his Adam's apple. He found the nerve to wrap one arm around her and stroke her hair - it was just as soft as he'd always thought it would be - and share another kiss with her. She smelled of something pretty and indefinable; at least it definitely wasn't gunpowder.

"I wouldn't call that fair either," Ben said. He sat up to draw the shirt over his head, then pulled his trousers off and threw them over the nearest piece of furniture. Rose had half slid off the bed and closer to Shaw, but she stood now and sat beside Ben again - quiet, but her eyes were warm with greed when she looked at him. 

Shaw stood too, stiff-legged with his shirt half out of his trousers and his cock fit to explode from overcharging, and Ben finally pulled his shirt off and threw it in the same direction as his own clothes, then moved aside to make room on the bed, making it creak. Drew him closer, hugged him for a moment, face against his belly, and fumbled at his trouser-buttons without looking. His lips moved ticklishly against Shaw's skin. Shaw brushed his hand away and undid the buttons himself, stepped out of the trousers - aware of Rose's eyes on him - and let himself slide down between them gracelessly, skin to skin on one side and to fine linen on the other. _Envy of the town, I am._

He thought Ben was about to roll over to bring their cocks together as they'd done more than a few times, but instead Ben leaned to kiss Rose. Playfully at first, then long and hot, gasping slightly when they parted. 

"Forgive me," Rose said hoarsely, "but I'd like to exercise my spousal privileges."

"I'm as impatient as you seem to be," Ben said; Shaw couldn't see his face, but there was a smile in his voice.

"I'm not like to fall asleep waitin'," Shaw said, since neither made a move to kick him out. Rose rolled over beside him and kissed the side of his mouth before sitting up, which he received gratefully. Her hand went to his hip, traced a circle between hip bone and thigh without touching his cock. She rose from the bed with her peculiar lanky grace and settled over Ben, drawing the shift up to her thighs. He supported himself against the bedpost while she worked herself down - quite quickly - and took him into herself; his lips parted, silently as before, and Rose gave a small sigh-groan as if of relief. They took a moment to settle, looking at each other, and Rose reached down to touch Shaw's arm and take his hand so he could steady her, and the sweet tension coiling in and between them flickered in him as well. Even with sweat on his face and his mouth half open, Ben managed to look amused when he glanced down at Shaw - he always liked to look him in the eye while they were at it, and Shaw too enjoyed the intensity of seeing and being seen. Then Ben pressed his face to Rose's neck and held her, breathed against her and together with her. The muscles in his neck and shoulder tensed for a moment, then relaxed as if with concentration; he was close.

Too close, maybe. Rose moved against him with some force, holding Shaw's hand almost painfully hard, but it wasn't long before Ben lost the rhythm and faltered with the shivery unwilling sigh Shaw - and surely Rose - knew well.

"Sorry," he said without looking it in the least, and sank back down onto the bed. Rose rested her free hand on his thigh and drew a long slow breath, regaining her equilibrium. Then she said, "Lieutenant?"

It took him a moment to understand her meaning, in part because he'd never been called by his title in bed before. 

She clambered off her husband, a beaten man, and settled in a kneeling position between them. Her hand was sweaty in Shaw's. "I'd rather not take any chances," she explained, somewhat vaguely and a little apologetically, "but..."

She guided his hand up under her shift and between her thighs so his fingertips grazed the soft hair on her quim. She was warm, wet with Ben's seed and with her own juices, and her thighs were slick with sweat. His fingers slid sweetly between her folds, and she gave a soft "oh". Then she began to move her hips against them, the same way she'd moved on Ben, the same small forceful movements. Her shift clung to her, damp with sweat or where Ben had kissed her, and her right nipple showed dark through the fabric. Her eyes were closed, but she made herself open them and smiled shakily at him, too far above to kiss. At last she reached for his cock; it felt dry and aching in her grasp for the first few tentative strokes, but she looked at it, and at him, and it was all he could do to keep moving his fingers. He settled into her rhythm, and on its own accord his throat produced a range of mostly inarticulate sounds, but at least he managed to keep any obscenities to himself except for a single "fuck" the first time she brushed her thumb over the head of his cock. It didn't seem to bother her, or Ben, who Shaw was dimly aware had rolled over to watch.

He came first and loudest and felt it all the way into his feet, and then he and Ben supported Rose while she shuddered and gasped and moved against them and tensed deliciously, her muscles tightening like steel against Shaw's fingers. She didn't stop; she leaned away from Ben's attempt to kiss her, her face shut with concentration, and came again and went boneless as water in their arms.

There was silence for a few minutes. Ben broke it with a soft chuckle, tired but pleased.

"No call for that, Maestro, it weren't you as reduced me to this state," Shaw said, sounding even more tired than Ben had.

"Oh, I think I may take partial credit." He ran his hand slowly and luxuriously over them both, Rose's linen-clad hip and flank and Shaw's sweaty ones. Shaw sat up enough to lean across Rose and kiss him lazily just for the joy of feeling him close; Ben winced slightly at the taste.

"Do you think you'll be able to compose faster with two muses?" Rose murmured, and Ben laughed again, startled this time.

"That would explain a few things about Signor Rossini's career." And maybe that of certain friends of theirs.

"Do you think your chemical research will be better for having two subjects to experiment on?" Shaw asked.

"Wouldn't that be against the spirit of the law as well as the letter?"

Well, yes, they'd committed a few different infractions in the last hour, some of them pretty severe in the eyes of _feu_ Napoleon. Shaw was done letting it eat at him, at least for the night.

Removing her spectacles, she sniffed her hand, the one she'd jerked him off with, and looked thoughtful. Shaw put his arm around her, his face to the back of her neck, breathing in the scent of her hair. Slipped his fingers into his mouth, still wet with her and Ben both, and the taste made his cock stir in spite of his tiredness - part of him was dying for a chew, but he was too tired to do anything about that either. Ben closed the mosquito net around the bed and settled between them, and they lay like three sweaty sardines in an unusually small tin - Ben in the middle, the better to inspire him.

This couldn't last long, Shaw reminded himself. But he hadn't slept so hard in years.

\---

January woke up late, when it was already light. Rose's side of the bed was empty, but Shaw was beside him, sleeping or at least feigning sleep. Both of them were in sore need of washing, as were the sheets.

"How long have you been awake?" he asked, conversationally.

Shaw shrugged his bony shoulders without opening his eyes. "Since Mrs January got out of bed, I think. Got any idea of the time?"

"I think it's past nine." Some kind of inertia made him roll over on his back again, his arm and shoulder against Shaw's back. He badly wanted a piss, a shave and at least two cups of coffee, but not badly enough to get up just yet. Shaw would probably stay there as long as he did.

After a few minutes Rose tapped on the door to say she was going downstairs to start the coffee, and would they mind stripping the bed ("just throw them on the floor, I'll have to press them twice anyway"). January allowed himself ten minutes to wash and shave before putting on his dressing gown; Shaw retrieved his rumpled clothing from the floor on both sides of the bed, but at least did a quick scrub-and-rinse before he got dressed.

The kitchen was uncomfortably warm. Rose, in an old calico dress and an acid-stained apron, was stirring something in a large bowl, but January's eyes went straight to Hannibal at the table. He stopped in his tracks - how could he keep this a secret from the rest of the town if he was going to start at the sight of a friend? Even if it was unheard of for said friend to appear at his breakfast table or anyone else's more than an hour before noon.

Hannibal inclined his head in greeting and waited politely for him to speak first.

"I won't tell you to quit my sight," January said slowly, "because it sounds so unwelcoming. But I hope thou hast no speculation, or anything worse, in those eyes which thou dost glare with."

"We're well past speculation," Rose said. "I've told him it's just what it looks like. Baby John's had his breakfast, and I'm working on ours, or trying to."

"Sefton," said Shaw, a trifle too nonchalantly. He made straight for the cups Rose had set out on the table; Hannibal poured coffee for him and then for January, supporting Baby John on his lap with his other hand - rather awkwardly, but the infant slept too soundly to notice. January sipped, closed his eyes and felt himself grow more awake. Then he deliberately looked across the table at Hannibal. The fiddler raised his eyebrows slightly.

"I also said it was my suggestion," said Rose. The corners of Shaw's mouth twitched at the memory.

" _That_ doesn't surprise me, my rose of all the world. You see these things scientifically. But any domestic arrangement that pleases you is pleasing to me as well."

"Same thing goes for me an' I daresay for Benjamin," Shaw said.

January nodded solemnly. "It's why I married you."

Rose grinned and pushed her spectacles higher up on her nose with her wrist. "All right, please me by taking over this dough - you'll do a better job anyway, I can't seem to get these lumps out. And pour me another cup while you're at it."

Hannibal gratefully traded the baby for the bread _in spe_ and went to work with a brisk and promising efficiency, and Rose, equally relieved, rocked her son gently with her left arm while she held up her cup with her right hand. January poured out the last coffee for her and saluted her with his cup, then the rest of the company; his silly mood had returned. Baby John batted sleepily at his cup with one hand.  
While the bread was baking he played the first psalm he'd finished for Hannibal. It was a giddy song of gratitude for life and the joys it held, however temporary. Baby John was awake and making noises - not-quite-words - at the music, his tiny mouth opening wide, and staring at Shaw, who was encouraging him ("Gonna be singin' in Latin 'fore you even learns to speak French, I bet..." - "Yes," Rose said, "he takes after his father.")

Rose and Shaw might be musically illiterate, but it was the sort of thing Hannibal understood. January had thought it might be too comical for a psalm, but the fiddler professed to like it. He read through the notes, nodding a couple of times, then went and fetched his violin.


End file.
